Free
by Panthiera
Summary: She was so lonely, that she saw even her kidnapper as a potential friend. Oneshot UlquiHime. Babble. It's depressing.


"I'm really a lonely girl."

This comment alarmed her captor, who had been slowly and steadily drifting off to sleep beside her with his head on his knees. Without glancing at her, he said quietly but sternly, "It would be better if you didn't speak", quelling the only sound that had resonated in the room in the four hours they had been there.

Inoue stared at her wrists, covered by the thick cloth that had been used to conceal her hands below heavily knotted rope. She was surprisingly calm in this situation, the sense of struggle and anxiety usually associated with kidnappings non-existent in her case. This felt like just another situation; any other situation. To her they were all the same. What difference does it make where you are or where you're going or who you're with? All that matters is you're alive, otherwise, you are dead. What could possibly happen to you that could kill you? And even then, you wouldn't be able to think or talk about it anyway.

Such is life. Twelve hours ago she was in her bedroom in the family estate, combing her hair. The estate owners were not her blood family, but again, no matter. Now she was in an unknown, damp place, which was freezing her to the core and making her question whether she was going to get any sleep tonight. Apart from the temperature though, there wasn't anything particularly outstanding in the way that she felt.

Apart from the feelings towards the man situated right beside her. He had _captured_ her. He had physically taken her- pulled her- from a given situation. And now he was stationary, motionless, a silhouette against the dim lights of the outside world.

She nudged him with her feet, waking him with a start. Her eyes stared blankly at him, edging him on, waiting for a response. He seemed groggy.

"If it's the bathroom you want, it'll have to wait." he declared, then eyed her solemnly for a second or two before continuing. "It's not you that I want, it's your father's money, so until I get it, just stay quiet and nothing will happen to you."

He then turned his back to her, baring the bones in his thin body. Her gaze drew to him compulsively, fascinated by the structure of flesh and bone, the way his spine retreated into his mass of jet black hair along his neck. If her eyes were hands, then she was running them along the length of his body, bearing jade stones into his skin and smelling, tasting the pure, tangible proof of human anatomy. He was a real person, touchable, beautiful, ugly, a mystery that had her captivated. He was a mere house servant; she barely knew him. He was nothing, a figure in a meaningless dream, a silhouette of emptiness. But there they were.

"What happens if I don't stay quiet?" she started. His back twitched. "What happens if I choose not to stay quiet?"

He remained motionless for a while, and turned his head a little, as if about to say something but thinking better of it, and continued his silent monologue.

"Where did you come from? I know your name is Ulquiorra, but that's all I know." Inoue said softly, trying to pry an answer out of her captor.

"Shut up, woman."

"I don't care whether I get back or not, you know."

"I said quiet!"

"When they find you they'll kill you."

Ulquiorra did not respond to this, which Inoue took as her cue to keep talking.

"People think I'm sixteen, but I'm really nineteen. I don't know how they believed me so easily when they knew I was just an unknown off the streets so many years ago."

This time, Ulquiorra turned around to face her, and rose onto his knees, towering over her slumped figure against a metal crate.

"Stop talking. Stop talking right now. This is not an expedition, and we are not friends."

"But we're here together, aren't we? To me that makes us friends."

Furrowing his brow, Ulquiorra felt the annoyance rise within him. "I don't know what kind of fairy tale logic they feed you out there, but we are not friends. I don't like you and you don't know me."

"I know that I like you."

"What? Are you crazy, little girl?"

"I'm not crazy. I told you, I am lonely. And I know this. And I know this is not the way I should act with you. I also know that they shouldn't have locked me up in that place for ten years, with no real contact with anyone but the maid. And even after a while they got rid of her. But I know that I like you, even though I don't know you. I see you from time to time. I saw you sweeping coal off the laundry room floor. I saw you escort my mother to the sentinel ball. I saw her try to kiss you, and I saw you being threatened because you didn't return her kiss." she took a breath. "I see your lights on by the greenhouse, I know you are in there by yourself. Sometimes, I wish I could come down there and talk to-"

She was stopped by his hand on her mouth. He wanted her to stop spewing her childish nonsense. After a minute or so, he loosened his grip and let go of her face.

Inoue said nothing for the time being, but throughout the situation they did not take their eyes off each other.

Ulquiorra reached for the hem of his shirt, and pulled it off his torso, revealing a deathly white surface underneath.

"What are you doing?" Inoue asked, her face expressionless and voice devoid of any emotion or tone. What one might otherwise perceive as the onset of a sexual attack in this instance was disregarded by the young, oranged-haired girl. She genuinely expressed by way of her comment a curiosity to know what he planned to do next.

Twisting his shirt, he trailed it around her head, covering her mouth. The next thing Inoue knew, he had pulled it tight upon itself, gagging her.

"No more talking."

She was truly saddened by his actions. So it was to be this way, then. Another two hours later the police will be here, following the signal from the chip installed in the back of her neck. He didn't know that, which made it even sadder for her and a pity for him.

It was going to be a silent journey to hell and back, and back again. No conversations, no feelings, no touch. She longed to touch.

When Inoue was six, they had taken her in from the streets. They, a high profile husband and wife, incapable of having any children. It was the husband's fault primarily, he had checked himself in for a vasectomy.

So they chose to adopt her, and the millions worth of publicity and acknowledgment that came along with the adoption.

But at the heart of it all, she was treated more like a regular stranger. They gave their affections to her sparingly, even more sparingly than they gave to each other. It was a crime worse than none, for indifference is crueler than cruelty itself. Before she knew it, she had turned nineteen and had become part of the furniture. So really, what difference does it _really _make, in the grand scheme of life and love, where she is, and where she isn't? Whether she is a pawn in a mansion, or a captive in a damp prison? Whether she lived, or died, was of no consequence to herself, and no consequence to those around her, not in ways that would matter, at the very least.

But of course, she always lived. She was insured for five billion. She had to live. And the others would die. But where is the _difference_?

"I was an orphan, Orihime. My mother killed my father when I was three, and then herself."

Her jade coloured eyes sprang to life, even though they were dry beyond what was normally functional. She blinked. She blinked twice so he would look at her and not at the window.

"I'm from the country Las Noches, where I worked as a farmhand, before I came to this city. I was thirteen, and they never ran out of reasons to hit me, bite me, slap and torture me. The men abused the women and the women abused me. One broke my arm, and one burned me for fun."

She edged closer to him.

"I started working for your father when I was sixteen, ten years ago. I killed someone he was meant to kill himself. For this reason he liked me. The person I killed was a university lecturer who had been seduced by his wife. It was entirely her fault, but I killed him."

Inoue crept onto her knees, edging closer still. Ulquiorra did nothing to stop her.

"It had been an accident, I had meant to kill your father."

He pulled the shirt from her mouth so she could speak.

"Why didn't you finish the job?" she asked, listening attentively for the answer.

"I wanted to pay no kindness to your mother. It had been her idea." He closed his eyes, not noticing how close to him Inoue had managed to progress. She was situated right between his legs, closing the gap that had been created by his knees.

"We are all children in this world, why are they permitted to make us suffer, Orihime?"

She leaned forward, and placed her lips on his skin, directly below his right eye, so that he could feel her breathing on his brow. It brought him a strange comfort, this contact.

"I want nothing more than a life I'd be afraid to leave." came the voice which was as low and soothing as the moon she pleaded to on many nights.

Orihime pulled away, her eyes downcast and, for the first time in a long time, feeling the onset of tears at his words. They were nothing more than words, like the ones she knew throughout her life, but they had done her a great kindness: by the pictures they created, the colours that yelled to her at the top of their voices, the proof that yes, they were all children of the world, their real mothers and fathers deep within the earth with the trees and the sky, instead of the ones that ran away and abandoned them without a second thought.

"I... I don't care if you untie me or not. I just want you to tell me this: Why are you here, right now?"

Ulquiorra looked concerned and for a moment he forgot about his objective; he forgot the answer to her question. It was puzzling. For such a young girl, she seemed so worldly. What he misunderstood as pettiness and annoying naivety was actually a lack of fear and to a dangerous degree, compassion. He sensed within her too a stagnant darkness, hidden to the world; a pure version of the blackness he felt inside, but likely in its principal nonetheless. She really did not care if she would live or die that day. Where he was a lonely sinner, she really was a lonely girl.

He placed a hand on her nape and pressed his lips to her neck. He kissed her deeply and longingly. She closed her eyes and welcomed the beautiful feeling, a part of the sensual darkness she created for herself, a place where she was truly adored, and at that moment manifested in the tenderness that they shared. Inoue raised her hands, still bound, and looped them around his neck, allowing the both of them to come closer together still. She edged towards his face with her own, her mouth hoping to steal from her neck the love it was receiving.

They were held in an extraordinary, powerful, impossible embrace. In moments he was perusing the nooks of her collarbone and then downwards, the depth of his emotion injected through her skin, into her blood, like a wave of white poison.

"I can never be anywhere, because of the pain that I feel. Everywhere to me is nowhere, and life will always be death." she said, her voice but a distant murmur. She then remembered the tracker chip. "Ulquiorra, we have to leave here. I have a device implanted that is trackable. They will find you, and nothing will change. You will feel pain once more. It's time for us to go."

He stopped, his chin resting on her shoulder.

"Us?"

"You are taking me with you."

A sudden, extremely pained expression took over his features, and for a long moment Ulquiorra fell very deeply in love with the young girl. His initial instincts had been partially right; she was a little naive after all.

"Orihime, you're too young to die my living death." he uttered softly into her ear. "You... You can change your future. For me, it has been too long, and I am too black from hatred to be reborn. Forget the money, you have all the possibility of life, something I wish for always, but will never know again, so I am leaving you with that."

With those words he felt her violently tense against his body. "I can't talk to anybody back there, not in ten years, but here we are together, and I'm talking to you, and you are my friend here. No, I don't want you to go, I want to talk with you, to know you."

But the words of a young girl were just that- words. If he had met her in another life, or at another time, maybe these words could ignite fireworks for him, but it was not that life, nor that time.

He stood up, an instant chill hitting his body, and left the room.

"We'll meet again. Someday, Orihime. Somewhere where we are children of the world again, free."

* * *

It was never publicised exactly what happened or who was involved. The media would have had a field day had those involved been poorer, or less connected within the social sphere.

Two months after the ordeal, Inoue was introduced to a young man named Kurosaki Ichigo, an heir of the financial world. They had a long lasting love affair, and after a year their engagement was announced. The young girl had finally received the attention she had longed for during her whole childhood years. She cherished her fiancé, who turned into her husband one afternoon in Spring. She gave him her love, and she gave him the world. Two months later, he was caught having an extra-marital affair with his secretary, and it was reported that this action caused the young Inoue Orihime to descend into madness. She was sent away to a specialist institute, where her high profile adoptive parents needed not approach nor acknowledge her. But the day before she was sent away, she saw a familiar old, young man with jet black hair. It was for the very last time.

Several months later, at the age of twenty six, Inoue Orihime was found dead in her cell. The doctor discovered that she was at the time eight months pregnant, and there was a high chance that the baby would survive. The newborn was rescued from the already deceased mother; a healthy baby born into the world, where it should live as a child of the earth, in love and free.

* * *

O W A R I - E N D

I'm sorry for depressing you all.

Feedback is much appreciated, many thanks.


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